In the dog-whistle competition between major political parties against asylum seekers and the war on alleged “terrorism”, the Australian government has jailed legitimate refugees, without charge, for reasons — extraordinarily — we are not allowed to know about. Opposition Senator George Brandis claims refugees who are deemed a “security threat” should be jailed because they entered Australia “illegally”, parroting the patently misleading line put by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott.
The government is more careful, simply saying a group of asylum seekers who have been granted refugee status have been found to be a security threat. Prime Minister Julia Gillard says we should not second-guess ASIO’s security assessment of asylum seekers who are found to be genuine refugees but who have had an adverse security assessment:
“They know about things like the conflict in Sri Lanka. They use the best intelligence they can to give us the best advice they can. So any suggestion that these people are just naively ringing up governments around the world and saying ‘What do you reckon?’ is not fair to those intelligence analysts and you should not create that perception in people’s minds.”
This admonishment not to ask questions, however, runs contrary to what is known about the way in which the Australian government reached previous determinations on the issue. In terrorism trials against three Sri Lankan Tamil Australians in 2010, the Australian Federal Police relied on evidence provided directly by the Sri Lankan government. That case failed on the grounds that the Tamil Tigers, with which the defendents were allegedly connected, was not actually proscribed as a terrorist organisation in Australia.
While ASIO is not just naively ringing up governments around the world, at least one government is “ringing up” Australian security agencies and providing information. That information, from a government that is under scrutiny for war crimes and continuing human rights violations, has been deeply biased, hence flawed and quite often wrong.
The ASIO finding that some Tamil refugees remain committed to achieving a separate state for Tamils in Sri Lanka coincides with the Sri Lankan government’s own assessment of their continuing, and self-serving, threat to that state. The Tamil Tigers were destroyed in 2009, along with the deaths of some 40,000 civilians, and they no longer exist.
But in Sri Lanka, Tamils are still persecuted and “disappeared”, Tamil women are r-ped, and even non-Tamil Sri Lankans are increasingly living under the Rajapaksa government’s jackboot. Journalists are targeted for assassination, the high court has been emasculated, and President Mahinda Rajapaksa has removed restraints on his personalised rule.
But, having fled this environment in fear of their lives, as found by the Refugee Tribunal, former combatants or or pro-independence sympathisers are now being jailed, under secret terms that, on the face of it, fit neatly with Sri Lanka’s authoritarian regime.
*Professor Damien Kingsbury is the director for the Centre for Citizenship, Development and Human Rights at Deakin University
Ever watched the original – sheep-dog trials?
And many of them are widows and children and even a baby boy born in prison here.
ASIO should not be even involved in refugee cases. But Gillard again displays her racist tin eared bigotry and ignorance.
George Brandis is a proper barrister, which is a good start for an Attorney-General if one values the law’s and, in particular, the Bar’s best traditions, but he is beginning to disappoint.
It is surely absurd that Tamil refugees are locked up as terrorist threats when we can be very sure they pose no terrorist threat to Australia or Australians. its just as bad as all that humbug about extraditing Zentai at the age of 89 for a 1944 war crime in Hungary when he could have been tried for murder here. As it happened the case was eventually thrown out because the extradition was sought for acts which weren’t a crime in Hungary at the time. Stupidity on top of humbug. I had been hoping that we might get an Attorney-General who believed in putting first traditional values such as “the liberty of the subject comes first” (not the “subject” in this case but the point remains good) but I wonder.
… in summary, some people talk about supporting freedom (politicians, business leaders, right wing media outlets and a prominent think tank) while other people actually support freedom (refugee lawyers, charitable religious groups and certain activists).
@ shepherdmarilyn
Since people who have claimed to be refugees, and may even have got public servants or tribunals to believe them are at least as likely as any other foreigners who come to Australia to be threats to our security in some way that matters how would you deal with that aspect of reality?
If someone enters Australia in a conventional way and the name on the passport triggers some security alert, clearly ASIO or the police may be legitimately involved. But what do you do when people turn up without any reliable documentation? Someone has to check up on them. Why not ASIO? As well as the Federal Police presumably because they may be plants from organised crime rather than terrorist organisations.
As you can see (above) I am not very impressed by the idea that Sri Lankan Tamils are threats to our security, or even our good relations with Sri Lanka, so I am just testing the cogency of your argument.